None of the above Christians

In a recent Time Magazine article some interesting statics were revealed. In America 16% of people identified themselves as having no religious affiliation in a 2009 survey but only 4% identified themselves as athiests or agnostics. So 12% of the American population believes in God but does not identify with religion or church. A little less than half of the unaffiliated (40%) claimed to believe in God, pray and had a desire find the right “religious” home.

Breaking this down with numbers based on the population of the United States of 307 million as of July 2009.

16% unaffiliated would be 49 million people.

4% are athiests or agnostics: 12 million

The unaffiliated spiritual/religious people: 19.6 million. Of these spiritual people we might guess that 3/4 of the unaffiliated are Christians given than 76% of American identified themselves as Christians. It is a guess but not an unreasonable one.

That leaves 14.7 million Christian Americans that have given up on institutional church.

If they were a denomination they would be the second largest in America behind the Roman Catholic church with 25.1 million. The SBC claims to have 16 million members but only 15.8 million American identify as Baptist in general…so their claims are suspicious.